


Two Views

by Tenyakares



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Pole Dancing, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenyakares/pseuds/Tenyakares
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jazz and Prowl have a talk about their past which reveals some things that make them think differently about each other. </p><p>In my storyline Starscream is in asylum at the Ark after having been abused by Megatron especially badly and he got into a relationship with Jazz. By this time he has already been with the Autobots for a few months.</p><p>-- Warnings: mentioning of prostitution ---</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Views

“Tell me something of your past” Starscream bid. Suddenly he badly wanted to know some more background of the quiet tactician. 

“What?” Prowl asked, confused. They were sitting in his bureau, having worked on the roster, and the seeker as so often surprised him with coming up with seemingly utterly random questions. 

“Something. From the police academy for example.” He had an idea, wanting to tease Prowl a bit. “Have you ever patrolled in the red light district?” the seeker asked, grinning. But Prowl was not amused but nodded gravely.

“Oh yes I have. It was terrible what you got to see there. It often bothered me deeply. How can you live there? It terrified me to imagine that bots were through some circumstances forced to live in that milieu.”

Starscream was a bit surprised about the obviously rather intense emotional influence that operation had had on Prowl. And he knew another view on that matter…  
“Yes? Oh. Was it so bad?”

“I found so.” Prowl actually shuddered. “To sell your body must be absolutely terrible. If I imagine that! That you have to grant access to yourself to earn money, in some cases to really get the energon you need to survive! It must be ultimately destructive for your self respect and integrity.”

“Hm. What happened during such operations? What have you seen?” Starscream inquired, driven by his curiosity. 

The copper sighed and obviously roamed archives he had long not opened. “I don’t want to unpack the worst things” he explained and rather opened some incidents which were not all that horrible, just showed the general situation in the red light district of Iacon. 

“Show me!” Starscream chirped and as so often Prowl could not withstand the begging big red optics. He connected to his workstation and began to replay some of the patrols and raids. He often shook his head meanwhile. “Imagine that! That you wake hungry, someone foreign comes along, offers you energon and you interface with him for it. For matter! Not for the partner. It must just be traumatic” he claimed and Starscream looked at him with respect. Prowl was such a gem. Though he seldom was emotional, he was in truth a bot of high principles, and sometimes such incidents showed how highly he for example valued the personal rights of bots, the physical integrity and the dignity of someone. And love. It was unimaginable for him that you connected for something else than deepest love – though he probably had never felt love. It warmed Starscream’s spark. If he ever found someone, Prowl would be one dream of a partner. 

Suddenly the copper froze, and so did Starscream. The memory replay stopped and Prowl gaped at the monitor, processors frozen. The seeker gulped.  
The screen showed how Prowl had just come into the saloon of an establishment with a superior officer to check it. Customers and prostitutes were standing around, looking a bit fearful or at least uncomfortable. Music was playing and there was a stage with poles for dancers.  
And in the background, only halfway hidden behind another mech – stood Jazz. 

“Uhm…” made Starscream and Prowl gasped and continued playing the memory.  
His superior officer barked “Everybody freeze, identity check.” The big, bulky guy went for the stage and touched the poles. “Still warm, too early for dancing guys, it’s not eight yet, business forbidden for this time!” he called, quite obviously used to raids in the red light district and not in the least bothered by it. He purposefully went for the prostitutes and began to take their personal data. 

Prowl watched his own memory aghast. Also he approached people there, though quite less determined, and at one point he looked over to his officer while he was just checking Jazz and tapping the saboteur’s, or not yet saboteur’s, hood. “No dancing yet, boy!” he warned, seemingly somehow knowing who had illegally danced before business time. Jazz looked a bit contrite but not really afraid. He was at relative ease with the situation, what showed all too clearly that he was used to it. Used to living in a brothel. 

Prowl gasped again when it sank in. “That is… Jazz!” he called, overwhelmed. 

“Uhm… yes, looks like it” Starscream confirmed. It could not be denied. 

“He… worked in a brothel!” Prowl was utterly beside himself. 

Of course Starscream in fact knew that already and tried to relativise. “He’s just been dancing…” he claimed though he knew Jazz had in fact sold himself occasionally. 

“No, Starscream, I’m sorry, you can not pay your bills with “just dancing”, it must have been more than that. You do not go to a brothel to only dance, you could never afford that!” Prowl quickly stopped the replay. “I am deeply sorry, this is terribly embarrassing, I had no idea this was in my archives and now you have seen this and learn about your partner’s past this way, this should not have happened.”

Starscream chuckled. “No worry, Prowl.” He smiled at the very agitated copper gently. “I already knew that. We speak with each other, you know? No secrets. He told me of it.”

“That he … he… he prostituted himself!” Prowl called, still so agitated that he could not regain composure. His picture of the second in command had just received another important puzzle part. 

Starscream hung his head. Perhaps it should really not have happened. Not for his sake, but for Prowl’s…  
“Calm, Prowl. He was never forced, he chose his, um, customers” he tried to calm the tactician down. “He didn’t have to sleep with somebody he didn’t want.”

Prowl shuddered, doorwings clattering. “This is horrible.”

Somehow Starscream found his uproar a little cute and he took his hand and squeezed it. “Prowl, you have a different view on that. You never had intense relationships, your sexual life is, as I think, pretty sparse. For you sex is still something very rare and holy, what is great. But that attitude changes with experience. You measure it from your point of view. For others, it might be totally different. And perhaps that relieves you, for it is less horrible for the people involved. Who have a lot of sex and long lost the feeling for its special personal value. You get used to many things. Unfortunately also to sharing your body with someone else. What Jazz has done a lot.”

Still Prowl shook his head, incapable of grabbing that.  
“That… that…”

“Really makes it easier to bear” Starscream claimed. “I promise you, it does. And did. Jazz chose that life. He could have done something else. He was never helplessly submitted to that fate. Certainly, as opposed to others, but you don't have to be concerned for him personally.”

Taking a deep breath, Prowl tried to calm down. “I certainly hope so. It always gave me nightmares when we raided the district. Seeing the people there, their bitter fate… you know, I have seen way worse things than this.”

“I believe that right away.”

\--

Starscream now had to somehow confess to Jazz that Prowl had discovered this tidbit of his past.  
When they had a quiet moment, he carefully began. “I asked Prowl about his past this morning. Just asked him to tell me a bit. Of police academy for example.”

“Huhu” made Jazz, not very interested.

“He opened some archived files and showed them. Something… um, a little unfortunate happened then.”

“Huh?”

“You appeared in them.”

Jazz laughed. “Can be, yeah. We have been on opposite ends at times.”

“He was rather… shocked.”

“About what?”

“It was in a brothel. He immediately induced you must have prostituted yourself.”

Now Jazz smacked his head and groaned. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. He was pretty agitated. It made him greatly uneasy.”

“No surprise.”

“Perhaps you want to speak with him about that?”

“What? Speak with Prowl about my sexual life as a prostitute? Uhm no?” Jazz laughed unhappily. “Definitely no.”

“It could be quite enlightening.”

“Starscream come on, I don’t want to speak with the copper about myself whoring! That’s just plain wrong.”

“You’d be surprised” Starscream just claimed once again. But Jazz shook his head still. What pity. 

\--

But Jazz in fact didn’t get around that talk. For the next day, when he came to Prowl to bring him the reports, the tactician was clearly not the same. He was looking at him disturbed and for Jazz it was written all over his face about what he was thinking. He sighed. “So what? Whatcha looking at?”

The copper was seemingly struggling for words but not getting anything out. Making a grim face, Jazz closed the door and sat down. “Yes, I have whored” he just confirmed. “And now? What’s on your mind?”

Prowl swallowed and still fought with himself. Jazz could not really say what he felt, if he was disgusted or irritated.  
At last the copper made himself speak.  
“Have you been in so much distress?” he asked.

Jazz raised a brow. “So much distress?”

“So much that you… had to sell your body?”

Jazz shrugged. “Was easy money” he said carelessly and Prowl’s doorwings hitched. 

“Easy money?” he asked shocked. “Easy to offer yourself to some foreigner? To endure intercourse you do not really want?”

A bit surprised, Jazz tilted his head. Seemingly not disgusted or peeved then, nearly sounded a bit more like… concern.  
“It wasn’t that bad” he assured. “See, I was an easy going bot. I slept with many people because I wanted it. And sometimes I wanted it and took a bit of payment for it. And well sometimes I at least didn’t mind and took the payment. It’s not that it was all so terrible. I was not forced to do that, ya see?” Still the terror did not vanish from Prowl’s optics and Jazz increasingly got the feeling he had to somehow soothe the copper. “I tried myself out” he said. “First I only danced, then I got offers. I felt flattered in fact, and agreed and got some money. Wasn’t all too bad an experience, so I did it again. Until I grew weary of it and then I left the district again.” 

“I can only imagine that as a trauma” Prowl claimed and suddenly Jazz felt reminded of how young and inexperienced the copper was in some aspects. He smiled gently. “No worry, Prowler. I can imagine that for you it would be. But for other people with a different background, it is not so much. See, no doubt it’s utterly terrible when you really do it for a living and have to accept every customer. But the way I did it it wasn’t so bad, really.”

Trying to regain composure, Prowl nodded. “Okay. It did not let me recharge calmly I have to say. I have seen so many horrors in the red light district which sometimes still haunt me that it bothered me deeply to know you went through such a thing.”

Now Jazz gaped. That was somehow… perhaps the most feeling he had ever seen Prowl display. Things that haunted the tactician? Such things existed? And then something like that, personal life history? Concern about him? That was somehow cute and in an instant let Jazz see Prowl in a different light. He had feelings after all, even compassion and a lot of it! That was astonishing.  
Suddenly Jazz found he knew awfully little about that mech he had worked with for millennia. He had always thought there could not be much to him. Prowl was so transparent, so predictable, he had never considered that there could be things under that uniform surface.  
He licked his lips. “Uhm. May I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever… have you ever slept with someone?”

“With femmes, yes. Never with a mech.”

“Ah.” Jazz nodded. So he had had relationships. Short relationships, he guessed. Poor Prowl. So pure, and obviously deeming love pretty highly. And respect for a partner. And he had never had it himself.  
Perhaps Starscream wasn’t so very wrong when he claimed the tactician was a gem which had to be unearthed?

When Jazz left the bureau, and a still agitated Prowl, behind that day, his own view of the tactician had changed pretty dramatically. Probably as had that which Prowl had of him.


End file.
